GP Singapore: Not Levy again.

The past weekend was amazing, top-notch-one-of-a-kind type of amazing. It's THE GP Singapore! To see all those Magic luminaries with my own two eyes was simply mind blowing. The Japanese crew was there. I saw Kenji Tsumura, Katsuhiro Mori, The Fujitas (Tsuyoshi and Osamu), Ryou Ogawa, Takuya Oosawa, Masashiko Morita, Shuuhei Nakamura, Sho Komuro, Kurihara and many others. Too bad I didn't see (or recognise) Shoota Yasooka there. The Ruel brothers were there, so was Levy, so was Karsten and Terry Soh. These are the names that we, the Magic commoners, speak in hush tones and a sense of awe and reference. I watched Shuuhei with his Balancing Tings, Kenji with his aggro Loam, Antoine and Levy with their domain Zoo. To be within reaching distance with these people was simply awesome (notice I use a whole lot of synonyms for awesome here). Erick was in it too, he got into 37th position and 12 in the amateur which was incredible as well. To be in such a high ranking in your first so-called real tournament is something I never dreamed of achieving it myself. Plus he finished with money, that's certainly nice. I got Mark Tedin to sign my Fireball and Ertai, The Corrupted as well and also met some Indonesians who came here to play in the GP.

Well, Levy won the whole thing (again) although I was rooting for Kurihara in the final (since he's piloting the Balancing deck) and Ryou Ogawa (since he's using Tog and he lost to, guess who, Levy as well in the quarter). Stupid Levy. But all in all, it was a great experience and to see that even the pro players are a very nice bunch of people. They always game for signing autographs, they are very nice to their opponent no matter who you are, they are willing to share their anecdotes and they are just friendly people. And what's amazing with them is their passion towards Magic. By the end of the day, when the tournament was over and everyone was packing up, the Japanese were still drafting on one table and playing Extended on another. These are crazy people. Crazy, crazy people.